The quantitative analysis of electrostatic potential and study of chemical bonding by electron diffraction structure analysis

The development of the electron diffractometry methods jointly the analytical methods of electrostatic potential (ESP) reconstruction and its topological analysis allowd one to proceed to the quality new level of electron diffraction structure analysis (EDSA): investigation inner crystalline electrostatic field, which knowledge permitts to study the relation of the atomic structure with physical properties of crystals. The review of the last achivements in this direction, obtained in the Institute of Crystallography of Russian Academy of Sciences, in which EDSA method was discovered, is done. The possibility of the EDSA method to solve precise problems of quantitative analysis of the electrostatic potential is shown on the examples of investigations of the ESP distributions and chemical bonding in crystals with NaCl-type structure and covalent crystal Ge. It is also shown that quantitative data on the potential distribution considerably enlarge conceptions on the nature of interatomic and inetrmolecular interactions in crystals.